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In your Emacs client you can find the Org Mode manual landing page, as seen online, in a roundabout way:

  • C-h r
  • m Org Organizer RET
  • f (org)Agenda Views RET
  • u

Is there a way of opening the Org Mode manual/info with fewer keystrokes?

TheOddsFavourUs
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  • I set up a function in Emacs to grep my info files (with a few lines before/after being visible to get a sense of the context), but Google is more convenient in my opinion. `org.info` is a file, so you could just open it. – lawlist Oct 31 '17 at 06:44
  • I'm of the opposite opinion. I use Google for adding links here, but when I need to look up something emacs-y, using Info in emacs cannot be beat. – NickD Oct 31 '17 at 21:40

2 Answers2

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The usual way to get to the org mode manual is:

  1. Start the info system, C-h i
  2. open the menu, m
  3. enter org <RET>

This will get you to the first page of the manual. You can also use the command org-info, i.e., M-x org-info, to jump directly to that manual.

If you want to quickly jump to arbitrary info pages, you have a few options. The function info provides programmatic access to the Info system. By convention, the name of the manual is provided in parentheses, and the name of the node follows, and the entire address is provided as a quote. For the top of the org-mode manual, this would be:

(info "(org) Top")

If you omit the node name ("Top" in this example), info will open the first node, which is always named "Top". (you can return to the top node from any part of an info manual with the key t).

When you're viewing an info node, the c key is bound to Info-copy-current-node-name, which will copy the full name of the node to the kill-ring, and briefly display it in the minibuffer.

You can bind that form to any key binding you like to give you quick access to the org manual.

For the particular case of org-mode, you also have the function (org-info), which by default does the same as (info "(org) Top"). From elisp, you can use it to jump directly to any node in the org-mode manual, e.g.,

(org-info "Capture - Refile - Archive")

Note that with org-info, the prefix (org) is not used, it's provided by the function.

Finally, you can also use bookmarks to link to either the org-manual, or a particular node within it. In standard Emacs, you set a bookmark with the sequence C-x r m while visiting the file you want to bookmark, and jump back to it with C-x r b. However, there are easier ways to do this in add-on packages. I like counsel-bookmark, which is part of the swiper group of packages. Google will show you other options.

Tyler
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  • I'm using emacs 25.2.2 and `C-h i` `m` `org RET` opens a buffer that lets me choose between `Org export Org syntax Org-Plot Orgstruct mode Orgtbl mode org-crypt`. `M-x org-info` works though. – user2740 Apr 07 '20 at 07:54
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Without any extra setup you should be able to go down to at most:

  • enter info mode: C-h i or C-h r or whatever
  • go to org manual: g (org) RET
Michał Politowski
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